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City officials have launched “a full review’’ into how an unhinged ex-cop charged with fatally stabbing a jogger had been working in a local public school — after being deemed too mentally unfit for the Marines and NYPD, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday.
Sayed Mohassib, 27, was working as a teacher’s aide at PS 200 in Brooklyn — three blocks from the waterfront promenade in Gravesend where he allegedly randomly killed runner Katie Suarez, 28 — before being busted in the Oct. 30 slaying.
The suspect had already been discharged from the Marines in 2022 for being psychologically unfit and then tried to return to the Police Department, where he had served for about six weeks before leaving to go into the armed force.
But the NYPD refused to take him back, citing erratic behavior, sources said.
“I have directed my team to conduct a full review of this matter, underlying the importance of the fact that nothing is more paramount than the safety of our students, and we know that when it comes to this specific case, New York City public schools has suspended the individual and is moving to terminate his employment pending the outcome of this case,” the mayor told reporters.
The city Department of Education later told The Post that Mohassib had been fired.
“The safety of our students is our very top priority, and as such, this individual has been terminated,’’ a DOE rep said. “We are supporting the NYPD in their investigation however is needed.”
Here’s the latest on Katie Suarez, the NYC jogger who was stabbed during a run:
- Mamdani vows ‘full review’ into how accused jogger-killer deemed too unstable for Marines, NYPD landed job at NYC public school
- Emotional new details emerge about lives saved with organs from tragic Brooklyn jogger Katie Suarez
- Deranged twist in case of ex-NYPD cop who allegedly killed jogger Katie Suarez
- NYC jogger, 28, stabbed in apparent random attack dies: ‘You took an angel’
A source close to the situation incredulously told The Post on Monday, “How does someone who was too crazy to serve in both the Marines and the NYPD end up working around children in a public school?”
“This isn’t some nut job who quietly retired from the police force and took a job at Best Buy.
“The DOE has some serious questions to answer,” the source said.
Several local pols said they support the probe into Mohassib’s hiring.
“[Suarez’s] murderer was evidently a mentally ill disturbed man with no criminal record, but who was an ex-NYPD officer and ex-Marine who was discharged from the military on psychiatric grounds,’’ City Councilwoman Kayla Santosuosso wrote in a statement posted on X and signed along with state Sen. Andrew Gounardes and tate Assemblyman-elect Chris McCreight.
“Troublingly though, at the time of the attack, he was a DOE employee, serving as a teacher’s aide in a public school.
“This last revelation raises serious questions about how he came to be employed in a local public school and warrants a full investigation into the circumstances of his hiring and continued employment,’’ the missive said.
Mohassib was arrested Saturday and charged in the grisly attack on the beloved bank teller on a path along the Belt Parkway, telling cops he brought the knife to the park because “people were going to come and kill his family,” according to a criminal complaint.
Suarez was out for a jog when she was stabbed twice in the neck, just minutes after talking to her dad on the phone.
Her dad found her bloodied and dying and asked a cyclist to call 911.
Surveillance video allegedly showed the deranged former cop returning home drenched in blood. He told police he tried to clean blood splattered over the walls of his Bensonhurst bedroom, according to court documents.
